


Under Pressure

by TrippinOverMyFandoms



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Study, im obsessed w him, introspective, kind of, of sorts, pro John Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:33:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27501598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrippinOverMyFandoms/pseuds/TrippinOverMyFandoms
Summary: John Winchester knew he wasn't a good person.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & John Winchester, John Winchester & Sam Winchester, John Winchester/Mary Winchester
Kudos: 9





	Under Pressure

**Author's Note:**

> a look into the life and complexities of one John Winchester because for some reason *cough* daddy issues *cough I'm obsessed with him. And honestly, I just love characters that I have to fight to figure out.

John Winchester knew he wasn’t a good person. 

He didn’t need anyone to tell him. He knew because he had a temper the length of the world’s shortest fuse. It took hardly anything to make him mad and set him off. Sure, sometimes he did his best to keep it under control but more often than not he let his emotions rule him. Oftentimes when his temper got away from him, when he let how he felt dictate his actions, he would end up taking it out on others, usually ordering them around. It was a habit he picked up in his time as a marine. A habit that made being a husband and father difficult. 

On top of his anger, he was prideful. Not the kind of pride where he wasn’t able to apologize, no, it was the kind where he would argue to prove a point and always had to have the last word in. He always had to be right. Something in him had to be above everyone else, he supposed it came from years of being the “man of the house” when his father abandoned him. 

He was obsessive, controlling, and overprotective of the ones he cared for. He had good intentions but didn’t always carry them out in the best ways. He cared deeply but sometimes that was too much, even suffocating, to some. His friends tried telling him he had a good heart but he didn’t believe it, what had he ever done to make them believe that.

John Winchester knew he wasn’t a good hunter.

Just like almost every other hunter, the loss of a loved one brought him into the life. He had his marine training so it wasn’t like he couldn’t fight what he was going up against, it was just that he didn’t always know exactly what he was going up against. John ended up relying a lot on Bobby Singer but before the two of them met he was hopelessly clueless in the world of the supernatural. He was also at a disadvantage because he still had two young children he was simultaneously caring for. Early on he would drop hunts if a sitter called because Dean refused to sleep or eat or if he just missed his dad that much. When John realized how problematic it was he began to tough it out, one of his hardest decisions because he still found himself worrying about his boys. 

As they got older and became teenagers and even young adults, that worry never truly went away. He still worried about them and it ebbed into his performance as a hunter. He’d end up spending the whole hunt worried about his boys to the point his hunting style became black and white. Hunt it, kill it, go home, new hunt, repeat. He had no regard for possible innocence, only looking to get it over with, running in guns blazing just to make it quicker. 

It wasn’t just parental worry that made him a bad hunter, his anger and pride found its place in it all, resulting in being unable to team up and work with other hunters. It didn’t help that other hunters also tended to be prideful dicks who also didn’t work well with others.

John Winchester knew he wasn’t a good husband.

He loved Mary more than anything else in the entire world. It’s why he was so distraught when he lost her. She was his whole world and he didn’t know who he was without her. She reminded him of any good quality he had never seen in himself before. She was the light of his life. The love of his life, no one could have ever replaced her. 

But he often put work before her. He told himself, told her, that it was because they needed the money. His obsessive nature found its place in consuming him and convincing him that if she was to be safe and happy then he needed to devote time to being at work so they could afford to live, so that he could give her and their children happy lives.  
She called him out on it too, but he was stubborn, so was she. They would fight about his work habits and how he was never home. Like the bad husband he was, he would remind her that when he was home she was gone, off doing who knows what. He sometimes wondered if she cheated on him whenever she left on her long trips. Of course, it wasn’t until after she died that he found she had been hunting. Back then it hurt whenever she left him and it would take form in anger that harmed their marriage. Lord knew there were times when it almost ended. He always assumed it would be in the form of divorce, where he told her he loved her too much to keep her where she wasn’t happy. He never imagined it would have ended with her death. 

Oh, the number of regrets he carried with him after she died haunted him until his own demise. 

John Winchester knew he wasn’t a good father.

He did his best with his every waking moment to take care of his boys and make sure they were safe. But this didn’t mean he was always a good father and he knew that. He hated it about himself. Their safety came first, even if it meant they didn’t always like him for it. 

He didn’t know how to be a father anyway. He never had a good example of one. His left him when he was so young that he barely remembered him. John resented him for it too, hated that his father left him and his mother alone. He blamed him for not knowing how to raise his own sons. Whenever he was stumped he fell back on “what would Mary do.” Most of the time it worked. 

However, his best wasn’t always actually best. He was devoted to them and devoted to hunting to protect them. Which meant he was frequently absent and couldn’t be there for them. He made sure they were safe with a friend, a sitter, or even Bobby during those times but he was hardly ever actually a father. He had his moments, he got to be there for a few important things, but not nearly enough. He was so hyper-focused on catching the thing that murdered Mary and making the world a safe place for his sons that he forgot he needed to be there, to have conversations that were conversations and not one-sided orders. 

He turned Dean into a soldier and ended up making Sam resent him. The worst part was the day he realized he didn’t actually know who his boys were. He found that he had been so busy protecting them that one day when he finally was there, it was too late. They had grown up and were people he hardly knew anymore. His little innocent boys were gone, they had grown up without him, and it was all his fault. 

John Winchester knew he wasn’t a good person.

He had faults he didn’t deal with; angry, prideful, obsessive, overprotective. He was a bad husband and an even worse father.

It wasn’t the life he ever imagined he’d have but it was the one he had to deal with. 

His wife, the love of his life, the light of his whole world was dead. His sons, the ones he fought so hard to protect, grew up without him and didn’t need him. 

John knew he couldn’t go back and fix it no matter how badly he wanted to. He couldn’t save Mary and he couldn’t go back and be a better father. It was a fact he had to face long ago. It was the only way he had been able to move forward. He could only live in the here and now and go from there. 

He couldn’t fix it, he knew that. 

John Winchester knew that sacrificing his life as a final act of protecting his boys wasn’t going to make it right. But he loved his sons. He loved Sam and Dean just as much as he had loved Mary. He wanted a chance to do right by them. He doesn’t think twice when he makes the deal to save Dean’s life. His death meant they could go on, that they could keep fighting. 

Despite all his faults and all his flaws, he was able to do one good thing. 

John Winchester knew he wasn’t a good person, not in life, but it didn’t stop him from trying.


End file.
